Over the last few weeks, a number of Italian wine folks have written asking me if I’m attending this or that tasting, if I’m available to meet with a visiting winemaker, when I’m coming back to Italy, if I’ll be at Slow Wine…

It’s incredible to think that I haven’t been back to Italy in nearly 12 months. There was a time when I traveled to my spiritual homeland six to nine times a year.

It’s next to unbelievable to think that I haven’t even left Texas since I attended my mother’s funeral in San Diego in November. I used to be on the road two weeks every month, leading seminars and events across the U.S.

I’m both happy and sorry to report that my work in Italian wine is coming to an end.

The number one reason for that is that Tracie’s career is going so well (poo, poo, poo!) that she needs me here to take care of the girls, the dogs, and the house, etc. I made a more than decent living in the wine business for 20+ years. Tracie was a stay-at-home mom for the first decade of the girls’ lives. But now she’s the bread winner and I’ve shifted to supporting her success.

I was fortunate to have such a rewarding arc in Italian wine: when I started out in 1999, the category was just taking off; by the time I left NYC in 2007, fine Italian wine had become a contender.

But wine and food were a detour for me: by working in Italian enogastronomy, I was able to support myself and then later my family. My greatest interest was in Italian culture and history. Wine and food were a means to keep me connected to the land of Petrarch, Pasolini, and Pontormo while bringing home the pancetta, as it were.

I won’t be returning to Europe until this summer when we visit as a family. But we will be tourists — no longer “authorized personnel.” Instead of dragging our daughters to wine country, I’ll be taking them to see the Vatican and the Uffizi (places of my youth!).

I’m not going to stop writing about Italy. But I’m also going to expand my focus to reflect my other interests, like Italian literature and our growing activism here in Texas.

Italia mia, thank you for all you’ve given me. This is no addio. It’s just an arrivederci.

The Italian word for “round up” (as in the raids conducted by ICE in the U.S.) is rastrellamento, literally, a raking up.

For Italians old enough to remember World War II, the term evokes memories of the “Black Shirts,” Mussolini’s paramilitary thugs who seized undesirables, enemies of the state, intellectuals, foreigners, homosexuals, Jews, etc.

For those familiar with history, the scenes broadcast from Minneapolis around the world reverberate with Italians who have studied what happened in their own country in the 1920s and 30s.

It’s no wonder that the Milanese took to the streets to protest the presence of ICE agents at this year’s Winter Olympics. (Yes, the U.S. sent ICE agents to the games; Google it.)

To illustrate what I’m talking about, please have a look at this iconic sequence from the neorealist classic film Rome: Open City.

The movie was made in 1945 using the war-torn streets of Rome as the backdrop and citizen actors as the “face” of the tragedy.

Look closely at the characters in the YouTube clip below and you’ll see the same terror and sorrow that I’ve seen as families are being torn apart by federal officers in our country.

Please join me — and the Italians — in standing up and speaking out against our government’s inhumane, racist policies.

As I’ve been sorting through my mom’s papers and photographs, a number of gems have already emerged: postcards from her trip to the U.S.S.R.; her diary from her sojourn in Africa (both trips were key elements in her narrative); my grandmother’s wedding announcement; my maternal grandparents’ immigration papers…

But nothing brought a bigger smile to my face than the discovery of Judy’s handwritten panzanella recipe.

Judy first tasted panzanella — the classic Tuscan summer bread salad — when I took her to Bagno Vignoni, a small village in Montalcino wine country where a thermal pool occupies the space of the town square. The year was 1989 and I was in my second academic year at the University of Padua.

My friend Riccardo’s mother spoke no English at all. But she took my mom by the hand and led her to her kitchen where they prepared her first panzanella together. What a magical moment that was.

Judy was fiercely proud of her panzanella recipe and she loved to tell the story of how she learned it — a great tale to share at her epic dinner parties.

I’m so geeked to post it here.

Now that I’m no longer traveling in the food and wine world two weeks every month, I’ve been thinking about what I should write about here.

Judy’s recipe was just the food for thought I needed.

Panzanella

1/2 lb. stale or toasted Italian bread
2 large ripe tomatoes, peeled, seeded, and diced
2 small red onions, minced
1/3 cup black olives, pitted
1 bunch of basil leaves, stemmed and cut into thin strips
3 cans tuna packed in oil
4 garlic cloves, chopped
2 tbsp. red wine vinegar
salt and pepper
1/2 cup olive oil

Soak bread in water to cover. Squeeze to remove water. Crumble into mixing bowl. Add tomatoes, onions, olives, basil, tuna, and garlic. Toss together.

In small bowl, whisk the vinegar with pinch of salt and pepper until dissolved. Whisk in olive oil. Pour over salad and toss before serving.

Serves 4.

Today’s post is dedicated to my good friend MaQuettia Ledet (above). She and I first met in 2018 when the local chapter of the NAACP had just begun to revive the historic Orange, Texas MLK Day March.

Today, she is the chapter’s vice president and she has grown the event with fantastic results. By my count, there were 200 people at yesterday’s presentation (a far cry from the handful of people who came out in 2018); the speakers were all compelling and engaging and the music was fantastic.

In just seven years, she took a moribund but cherished tradition and has transformed it into a living, breathing agent of community support. She was the mistress of ceremonies at yesterday’s event and man, it was just super.

I was asked to give a short talk about “protecting freedom.” I told the story of Fannie Lou Hamer and how her power as an orator was a key step in bringing about the Voting Rights Act.

That campaign included the now famous quote: “Is this America, the land of the free and the home of the brave, where our lives be threatened daily, because we want to live as decent human beings?”

In 1971, she called out the newly founded National Women’s Political Caucus for not including issues faced by Black women in their platform.

That’s the speech that gave the historic civil rights movement one of its most iconic battle cries: “Now, we’ve got to have some changes in this country. And not only changes for the black man, and only changes for the black woman, but the changes we have to have in this country are going to be for liberation of all people — because nobody’s free until everybody’s free.”

I closed my talk by noting that as long as people are dying in ICE custody (the third person to die in custody this year, detained in Minneapolis, had passed the night before) no one in this country is truly free.

It’s what MLK called the “inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny. Whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly.”

Thank you for reading and thank you for observing and celebrating MLK Day. What are we doing for Black History Month “on purpose,” as my friend Annette likes to say?